Drive, Social Media Savvy and Faith Fuel Alumnus David Choi's Success in Real Estate
David Choi owes his success, at least in part, to his desire to work less.
In his sophomore year at Rutgers Business School, Choi was clocking some 100 hours a week—between studying, interning, and leading business clubs—and it wasn’t how he saw himself living for the rest of his life. So, he said, “I googled ‘how to retire early,’ and I found real estate.” Specifically, he discovered that the vast majority of today’s self-made millionaires—roughly 90 percent, according to some estimates—have made their fortunes in the realm of real estate, a fact that synched not just with Choi’s goal of an early retirement but also with his entrepreneurial spirit.
“I really wanted to be able to provide for my family, retire my parents, go to my kids’ ballgames and dance recitals,” he said. “I knew that wasn’t going to happen working in private equity for someone else, so I chose a business that I felt would help me obtain financial freedom.”
It should be noted that Choi, at present, doesn’t have kids—though he is engaged—but he clearly plans ahead, a trait that’s served him well in his stunning business trajectory. At the age of 30, he’s the CEO of Leverage Companies, the Newark-based real estate private equity firm he founded in 2019. (He was among the inaugural 2025 cohort to receive a Rising Business Star Under 30 Alumni Award from Rutgers Business School.) The company’s real estate portfolio is now worth $60 million, and, Choi said, “we’re pretty close to doing a billion dollars in transaction volume annually—so yeah, praise the Lord.”
I had no doubts that David was going to be successful. My pleasant surprise is that he became so successful so quickly. He’s really good at sussing out profit opportunities, and he has no problem taking calculated risks, which I think explains his very rapid upward trajectory.
Professor Morris Davis
His faith has also served him well: He describes himself as a born-again Christian, and it was his desire “to spread the Gospel through business” that propelled him to apply to Rutgers and, ultimately, to found Leverage Companies. “Our mission statement is ‘Creating millionaires through real estate,’” he explained. “And I get really excited about the number of lives that we can change through our various subsidiaries.”
Real estate has certainly changed Choi’s life. Before he’d discovered it as a career path, he was floundering academically, with a 1.6 GPA going into his sophomore year. Two weeks after he decided to pursue real estate as a course of study, Rutgers Business School opened its Center for Real Estate, a bit of synchronicity that proved especially felicitous for Choi. “I’m so blessed,” he said, “because it was the beginning of the program, so I was able to get taught by some of the directors. I found some really great mentors.”
George Jacobs, for instance, one of the center’s founding members, helped guide Choi and two Rutgers teammates to a first-place win at the 2017 University of Miami Real Estate Case Competition, in which teams compete to create a real estate project with a positive social impact. Among other impactful mentors, he lists Kevin Riordan, the center’s former executive director; Ron Ladell, currently the chair of the center’s executive committee; and Morris Davis, the center’s academic director, all of them industry veterans. It was Davis who advised Choi to accept an internship at Hampshire Companies, the Morristown-based real estate asset management firm, over several other well-paying jobs he’d been offered, because Davis knew the internship would most benefit Choi in furthering his real estate career.
“I had no doubts that David was going to be successful,” Davis said. “My pleasant surprise is that he became so successful so quickly. He’s really good at sussing out profit opportunities, and he has no problem taking calculated risks, which I think explains his very rapid upward trajectory.”
Choi’s business savvy, said Davis, is evidenced as well in his social media presence. He’s amassed more than 200 million views and has some 900,000 followers across Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and LinkedIn, who learn from him, invest with him, and sometimes end up working for him.
Our mission statement is ‘Creating millionaires through real estate.’ And I get really excited about the number of lives that we can change through our various subsidiaries.
David Choi
Choi’s continuing connection to Rutgers Business School is profound. He’s an adjunct professor at the Center for Real Estate and returns every semester to speak at the Real Estate Society, which he founded. Almost half of his 120-person staff, which he describes with characteristic enthusiasm as “an awesome team of winners,” are Rutgers graduates. “If not for Rutgers–Newark, Rutgers Business School, and the Center for Real Estate,” he said, “this company would not exist.”
That sense of connection extends to the city of Newark as well. Choi chose it as his company’s headquarters because, he said, “this is our backyard. Rutgers–Newark is here. My church is here. My girlfriend lives here.” The company’s nonprofit work, through a division called Leverage Cares, is focused on teaching financial literacy and entrepreneurship to the youth of Newark.
“We’ve been here since 2019,” Choi said, “and we plan on being the next Prudential or Audible”—two of the largest corporations headquartered in downtown Newark.
Newark was, in fact, where Choi made his first real estate deal, while he was still a student, buying and selling a three-family house on Meeker Avenue and netting $65,000 in the process. “I thought I’d made it,” he said with a laugh. He’s likely laughing because this year, Leverage Companies stands to do close to a billion dollars in transaction volume.
Typically, though, Choi is thinking far beyond his current success. “Our goal,” he said, “is to become the number one real estate community in the world.” Given his drive, his dreams, and his deep-seated faith, he’s entirely likely to reach that goal—and maybe even work less in the process.
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